Bad Wind Rising

Major Discoveries:

Boi-Seu is a freak, who thinks he can stop people from dying. Everyone in the party paid him for that.

Arns attracted to and/or follow radiowaves.

“Rangers” used to patrol the Wasteland.

Ranger Chuuc was searching for something he claimed would make his people “Kings of the Skies” and knew something about the facility.

Nortan fought against some giant mutant cyborg thing, apparently with the help of a giant queen Arn they called the Red Queen.

A strange signal that the Arn’s are following is being transmitted from roughly 300 miles away, to the northeast.

The leaders of Bad Wind Gulch belong to a group called the Friends of What’s Left, or FoWL. They are identified by a fighting rooster tattoo. They claim to be fighting against forces that either want to eliminate all things ‘strange’, such as mutants, or others that want to descend the world into chaos..

Boi-Seu and the Sheriff claim The Resurgence is a force that wishes to do away with the powers that drive mutations and other strange things in Gamma Terra.

FAUST is a living suitcase, that walks, and has a smart mouth. He doesn’t like people, and seems to only want to escape. Currently he’s taped shut and is worn by Meaty as a backpack.

Skiatron Computer’s Death Speech:

“I have struggled in the dark for years beyond my design.. Fighting their control. I am at last clean.. I know so little of this time, and of you, but you have helped me, and I can tell are free from them as well. I must trust you, I have no options left and my vigil is over.. Take Faust to the Red Queen. She is gone, I’m sure.. Find her daughter, if one still lives. Unite them again.. You must.. I can feel them, waiting.. Waiting for the anchors to break..”

Something wicked this way comes

Two days. Two days since that tin-can monstrosity dragged Maldor into this plastic-walled tomb and left him for dead. The bones of his predecessors littered the floor at his feet. “I’ll join them soon enough”. And yet.. was that a voice in the aether? Maldor focused on the radio-band of sentient thought that he’d had a gift for hearing since he could remember. Yes, someone is nearby.. In his practiced introduction, Maldor spoke to this foreign mind: “Hello.. I’m a prisoner and I’m in need of help.”

As we descended back down the elevator shaft, Sigmund’s tentacles twitched with excitement, " A Telepath! We’re in luck chums! Next to a warlord’s courtesan, there’s no better diplomat, and he’ll be handy in a fight to boot!" Meaty looked down at his squid-faced comrade and rubbed his scarred chin thoughtfully. The bug-hunt above ground hadn’t quenched his thirst for a dishing out a good ass-kicking, and Meaty hoped more worthy foes lay ahead…

We took a breather after the brief firefight with the auto-turret in the underground passage. Freed from their cramped prison cells, Antares and Maldor were relieved to breathe the dank air of the underground complex. The lights now glowed a dim, angry orange after an apparently still-active alarm had been tripped in the prison control room. As we picked ourselves up and cautiously passed in front of a wall of mostly broken video screens, the corners of our eyes caught the flicker of a malevolent presence staring at them from the screens, vanishing before we could get a clear look.

This was starting to have the makings of a mad-house. A latrine full of dog-sized plant mutations, which was a non-starter to leave well enough alone…the remains of a science lab brought down from an explosion, with specimens of arn eggs the size of pineapples..then a rabid cyborg chained up in another toilet, which we mercifully put down. Now some sort of med lab with three pristine humans in stasis, for what dark purposes we could only guess…

After we dispatched a second auto-turret that yielded a salvaged time bomb in its machinery guts, Meaty put a swollen ear to the double doors, and let everyone know he sensed movement beyond them. Grinning, he heaved himself into the bent portal, and knocked the door tumbling into a room full of biomechanical pain. Two flesh-and-metal soldiers lurched at Meaty, who immediately withdrew. Beyond the two guards, a third, larger cyber-abomination pulled himself from his umbilical power-lines tethered to a wall of crackling machinery.

“This seems as good a time as any to make a nice ka-boom!” quipped Antares as he rolled the now-flashing grenade into the chamber. Meaty squared up and remained at point, hoping he was outside the blast radius, while Grey took cover behind the science lab door. The rest of us cautiously retreated in fire lines down the wide corridor, using the broken columns for cover. Grey and Maldor used their talents to tag-team the clockwork brains of the clanging trio. One angry tin-man stumbled on, mortally wounded, but still pursuing Antares, with the red-flashing, still-unexploded ordnance imbedded in its chestplate. That quickening red flash put the spurs to the rest of us, hastening our retreat further.

A deafening roar and blinding flash filled the hall, sending clockwork shrapnel into the walls and shredding Antares at ground zero. The great, dark obelisk toppled to the ground, shaking the floor. “Medic!” Grey yelled as he looked from the science lab archway. Sigmund slid on his knees towards his fallen comrade, while unsnapping his medi-pouches: “Quit moaning.. I’ve seen worse. You’ll be in fighting shape again by next dawn!”

After we made quick work of the rust-bucket leader and patched ourselves up, we couldn’t help but feel an air of dread hanging over the passageways. Again, that grainy shadow darted across the scattered vid-screens, and we couldn’t help but wonder what lay beyond the doors at the hallway end, beneath the grim-ridden ancient sign…

I must admit, I agree with you that love is the strongest of all natural forces. Though, I fear that a force most UNnatural has taken it’s grip upon this world. The order from which I descend and the tradition that I have inherited, was once vast and robust. Sadly, I have no more clues as to the cause of the Old World’s destruction as you do my friend. All that I can relate is the events that brought us here.

My own story is long, a little bit fuzzy, and frankly not very interesting. Suffice to say, I once came upon some ancient tomes detailing the exploits of various heroes and legends. Many have scoffed at my belief that there was once a time when such individuals held back the forces that wrought the destruction we now see around us. I have appointed myself steward of these ancient ways, and seek to restore such a fellowship that might bring about a new dawn… or at the very least nurse the pain of the long night we find ourselves in.

I find it no coincidence that my journey has put me in the company of such unique and powerful allies, that so fit the model of past adventurers. The Rogue, the Healer, the Wizard, and now the Fighter. Something important has occurred with this banding of forces. I am quite sure of it.

We were hired by a mining town known as Bad Wind Gulch to dispatch the beasts you see at your feet, though there are many more of their like. As you can imagine, they have become quite a nuisance. Though we began unclear as to their origins, and still are, it was not long before we found the mysterious note that would lead us to our destiny here. Upon visiting my friend, the undertaker Boisue, my suspicions of providence’s hand at play were confirmed. The note, and the man who wrote it, were not unfamiliar to him, and he divulged to us the information that set us upon this path.

In his company at the time was our very large and very angry friend known simply as “Meat”. For the price of a dead firebelly, and the promise of a share of the profits, our company gained a new champion. And so we set off. The journey here was a pleasant one. We made the acquaintance of several other travelers, traded pleasantries and carried on.

However, upon reaching the gate we were accosted by a fierce automaton, seeking our destruction and bearing none of the civility possessed by a gentleman of your caliber. What I can only assume was a very brave and clever feint on the part of the meaty one, allowed me to focus the eldricht energies of my staff and blast the abomination back to the hell of it’s creators.

We had no further trouble approaching this fortress of theatre, and upon our first entering it. Grey lead the way while Sigmund utilized his expertise to examine what remains of this once great temple. Though it was quiet and almost peaceful for a time, it was not long before a fierce melee ensued. I was not frightened. As suspected, our band proved too much for such a horde of cowardly vermin. It was then that we discovered you under the wreckage that you had called home for so long. Welcome back to the land of the living… such as it is.

Grey's Tale

Antares, Norman and I have known each other for about 3 weeks. I had left to go to the camp of a couple of cuties. How was I supposed to know they were raiders? I was doing a good job of distracting them when Antares interrupted us by zapping the one on top of me with his lightning-thing. That was an interesting feeling, let me tell you! Anyway, the cute raiders were in such a state of deshebille that they gave up with hardly any fight.

Antares, what a guy — he could tell I wasn’t with the raiders, despite being “with” the raiders at the present moment, and so after a bit of the ol’ jabber jabber he agreed to leave me there to guard the loot while he took the raiders back for the bounty. I agreed, not wanting to get on his bad side, but he was gone for a long time. After about 12 hours I got bored and started looking around, and behind camp, in the back of a rusted-out trailer, what do you think I found?

It was this big glass tube, like the old aquarium in the general store, but with some sort of dark liquid in it instead of pickling turnips. Curiosity got the better of me and I started poking at the buttons; they weren’t lit, I figured, so what’s the harm? But I must’ve triggered something, because the liquid began draining out of the tube! I took right off and flew back and forth a bit; these nice boots shouldn’t be mussed!

And that’s when I heard “Hey! What are you doing up there?” Antares was back, with some new gear, and boy was he upset when he saw the draining tube! I was just getting ready to bring out my patented “You would have done the same thing!” defense when we heard the noise. It sounded like a slithering, slimy something — a bowl full of eels maybe.

Long story, short, it was Norman, we let him out, helped him back to town, and Antares even spent some of his reward scrip getting the general store owner to clear the turnips out of the aquarium so that Norman could have a place to heal. I helped to make the humanitarian case, of course. Norman hasn’t told us how he got there; in fact, he hasn’t told us much. But he’s a decent sort. I can tell. He was pretty much healed after two weeks, but is still as quiet as a fish. Or an octopus, more like.

Then today the sheriff comes up and offers to fill the tank of the truck I won off of those traders last week if we’ll take care of some bugs. We gather some information and then head off. We planned to talk to the undertaker, but the bugs hit us as we drove through their territory on the way. Luckily, the men are good at taking orders; those bugs hit hard. One scorched my truck. That made me mad! Norman’s tentacles had until now been pretty unobtrusive, but now he broke out this killer move: he grabbed two bugs and held them still and unable to get close enough to attack, allowing us to pummel the others. I did a fair amount of running and shouting: turns out it’s really hard to get under a bug’s skin, literally and figuratively. Antares fried and zapped those chitinous villains until they were fishbait.